Exclusive: Alex Bowman Refuses to Take Sides Amidst Heating Chevy Dynamic Between Kyle Busch and Corey LaJoie

Coming off a fresh season win, Chevrolet Camaro driver Alex Bowman beamed confidently. After dominating the streets of Chicago, he was ready to conquer the mountains of Pocono. Starting sixth, Bowman secured his sixth top-five finish. However, while he did put on a stellar performance, his fellow Chevrolet NASCAR Cup rivals faced a tougher day.

Kyle Busch and Corey LaJoie, driving the No. 8 and No. 7  respectively, made contact as the field fanned out and funneled into Turn 1 during the final stage of the Great American Getaway 400. This incident sparked a conflict between their teams, prompting RCR boss Richard Childress to comment on the matter. While many thought it was LaJoie’s fault, others just deemed it as a common occurrence during races. But as EssentiallySports, the official media partners of Real American Beer, caught up with the #48 post-race regarding the crash, the driver (not one to dip his toes in controversy generally) chose his words rather carefully.

Alex Bowman is not in on the drama! 

Kyle Busch, a 63-time Cup race winner, is facing the longest drought of his career. And it continued at Pocono, which was supposed to relieve his parched spirits, stretching his winless streak to 42 races. Despite owning the second-most wins at Pocono Raceway as an active driver with four victories, the Richard Childress Racing driver faltered. And Corey LaJoie exacerbated the situation more, as he spun Busch on lap 121, causing a multi-car wreck. This ignited an RCR-Spire Motorsports debate, as Richard Childress bashed LaJoie by calling him “a damn weapon,” while the latter shrugged off any responsibility.

Both drivers are lagging at the rear end of the Chevrolet spectrum. And as Alex Bowman is a part of the front end of that same group, the Hendrick Motorsports driver chose his words carefully while addressing the Busch-LaJoie fiasco. Talking to journalist Kailey Mizelle for EssentiallySports, he immediately started off with: “I haven’t even seen it (the wreck)“.

Calling NASCAR a high-emotion sport, our on-ground reporter asked Bowman if he tries to stay out of commenting on others’ wrecks, referring to the clash between Busch and LaJoie’s Chevys. Taking a middle ground and refusing to take sides, Bowman said, “I don’t know. I think everybody’s situation is different, obviously. You race the same guys every week. So everybody kind of has where they fall in differently with different people, people they get along with, people they like to race, and people they don’t like to race. So I don’t know what happened, I haven’t seen any of it. But yeah, I’ll go check it out.”

Jeff Burton, on the other hand, was not one to mince his words. After the #7 racer’s spotter pinned the blame on Busch for wrecking himself out by saying, “Yeah. I ain’t worried about him. It’s all about us. Focus forward. You let him have it the first time. Second time he got what he deserved. All good,” Burton gave it back right then.

“Right here. This big block, right? That’s a big block. That’s an aggressive block. But this — Kyle Busch didn’t hook himself there. He got hooked there and if LaJoie thinks he deserved that, then LaJoie has the prerogative to do it,” he said after watching a replay of the incident at the broadcasting booth.

Evidently, RCR and Spire’s Chevys fared badly, and Alex Bowman’s No. 48 glittered. After snapping his 80-race winless streak last weekend, Bowman has definitely gained confidence. He unloaded another hot rod at the Pocono qualifier, being one of two drivers in the opening round to crack the 52-second barrier. Bowman placed sixth in the first stage with ease and used strategy to finish seventh in the next stage. On the final and chaotic stage, he used the restarts to his advantage to ultimately top off with a podium finish.

Yet, as Alex Bowman pointed out, the restarts were crucial for the 2.5-mile Tricky Triangle. This very reason may have caused trouble for Busch and Corey LaJoie.

Bowman highlighted Pocono’s signature difficulty

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After two stages of relative peace, trouble awaited the drivers. Two multi-car wrecks ensued on the final stage, besides some bizarre single-car cautions with Todd Gilliland, and pole winner Ty Gibbs. This led to a flurry of restarts, which were critical for the race. It sparked discussion among drivers about where they wanted to position themselves going into Turn 1. Alex Bowman commented on this unique difficulty: “That’s just Pocono, right?” He recalled his 2021 win in Pocono, where the final restart handed him the lead as Kyle Larson blew a tire.

This same situation must have affected Kyle Busch and Corey LaJoie as well. After Gilliland’s caution, the race restart shuffled the field. Busch went down the front stretch with hope in his eyes before LaJoie bumped him from behind. Alex Bowman explained the tricky restart situation that stole Busch’s ambition, saying, “It’s tough here. If you get guys that go three wide, it just kills the whole inside line, so the outside line doesn’t have a choice – they have to push each other and that’s why they get going so well. It was worth taking a shot at it and it didn’t work out.”

Further explaining his debacle of which lane to choose, the 31-year-old said, “I burnt the right rear off of it on the long run [when] I needed to get him on the restart. We kind of debated and went back and forth on which lane to pick, and I could have picked outside the second row and had a more secure spot [holding off track position], but I thought it was hard to turn down the front row.”

Well, Pocono has always been notorious for its restarts. Putting drivers into positions they can’t control, with a straightaway stretching for 3,740 feet, and heading into a hard left turn, the venue saw almost every driver drawing caution when it came to navigating traffic.

Last year, a staggering three out of the four cautions were caused by accidents on restarts. In fact, more than a third of the cautions in the last two Pocono races have been caused due to the same reason. This usually happens as drivers often go three and four-wide into Turn 1 from the wide front stretch. “I was blessed enough to be in front all day on the restarts, but I’ve watched too many races around here, and I know how it goes,” P2 finisher Denny Hamlin said after the race this year.

On the other hand, Joey Logano, way back in 2015, had also elaborated on what makes the races at Long Pond so difficult. “Restarts are a big deal here and being able to make the most out of it. We’ve seen the restarts here obviously be crazy, down into Turn 1 and into the tunnel. That first lap or two and the way the draft works and how long the straight-aways are, having a good car there is important,” he said.

But that does lead to some exciting racing as well, doesn’t it? Let us know what you think of the Kyle Busch-Corey LaJoie fiasco. Was it the drivers’ fault or can we blame Pocono for this one?